At the moment fifteen Lotto Belisol riders are on training camp in Mallorca. They left on Wednesday and will return home after one week. From the 22nd until the 29th of January there is another training camp on the Spanish island. We talked to sports director Bart Leysen about the reason of this and the difference with the December training camp.

Bart Leysen, sports director: “The difference with the first training camp in December is mainly the duration and intensity of the trainings. Next to that it’s all about taking rest, otherwise the quality of the training diminishes. On top of that the competition is approaching, especially for Kenny Dehaes and Tosh Van der Sande who participate in the Tour de San Luis. After a week at home the others will return for another week of training camp. This is to vary between a very intensive week, a calmer period and then raise the tempo again. It’s better to adapt the body systematically to the growing intensity and take sufficient rest in between.”

“We have temperatures between 15 and 18 degrees Celsius, that’s perfect. Tomorrow there is, just like today, a ride of at least five hours. Today it was relatively flat, although with more than 1400 altitude meters, tomorrow we’re going into the mountains. On Sunday there is a rest day, then the guys will only get on the bike for an hour or two. Monday and Tuesday there are two long trainings. Maxime Monfort and Tony Gallopin, two newcomers, ride the last hour of the training on their time trial bike to get used to it. As they are GC riders that is very important. Our neo-pros Breen, De Bie and Vallée are doing well. They can follow well on training, this proves again they are ready to take this step.”